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Trump Makes CO2 a Weapon of Mass Destruction in War against Us All

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on 6/6/2017

Trump Declares War on America, World, & Earth;

Chooses CO2 as his Weapon of Mass Destruction

By quitting the Paris Climate Accord, the Trump regime has issued a formal Declaration of War against our children and grandchildren and thousands of species that global scorching will drive toward extinction.

The Trump regime will use CO2 as its chosen chemical weapon of mass destruction.

Even before the formal Declarationof this War Against Life, Trump had already taken major steps to scorch and burn the Earth.

These included decisions to shatter the Environmental Protection Agency, to scuttle the Clean Power Plan, and to remove regulations that control auto emissions, keep lead out of our drinking water and mercury out of our air, and even regulations to ensure purity of food and water from disease-producing bacteria and carcinogens.

Trump’s claim that healing our climate destroys jobs is nonsense. If the US government were to decide that we face an emergency even more destructive than the Nazi conquest of Europe in 1940 and were to pour billions into wind and solar energy, millions of good jobs would appear. Instead, millions of Americans will suffer from Trump’s war through droughts, floods, superstorms, and the spread of formerly tropical diseases.

What to do? We must build a far stronger People Power movement committed to renew a climate and a planet as healthy, abundant, joyful, and life-giving for our children and grandchildren as it was for most of our parents and grandparents --- and with much more eco-social justice infusing that transformed world, to make sureallour children share in that abundance.

And where can that greater strength come from?

American religious communities are a sleepy giant of potential social transformation. We need to fully awaken them, and The Shalom Center has just begun a crucial campaign to do that. We need your help to make that campaign succeed. You can help by contributing at

What is mostly missing in the religious world are precisely thereligiousqualities that could make healing the Earth a central religious concern. Missing are the Earth-focused liturgies, sermons, ceremonies, and sacred everyday life-practices that would get deep into the guts and hearts as well as the minds and actions of people with even limited religious involvement.

So The Shalom Center has called together a meeting later this month of a small working group from diverse religious communities to develop liturgies, sermons, and ceremonies --

for life-cycle events such as baptisms and b’nai mitzvah;

for festivals such as Holy Week, Passover, and Eid al Fitr;

for weekly celebrations of Jumat, Shabbat, or the Sabbath;

and to encourage sacred daily practices –- for instance, congregants gathering in solar-energy co-ops, or reshaping their transportation habits to enhance the Earth instead of wounding it.

Our June meeting is off to an excellent start. We have received the funds necessary to support our staff to work on this, and to cover travel and a 1 ½-day stay at a retreat center.

Then begins the crucial challenge.We need to raise $35,000 to turn the ideas and plans emerging from our June gathering into the outreach that can fully awaken religious communities into a real movement.

Through your membership and readership in The Shalom Center, you have shown that you get the need and urgency. With this new multi-religious project, we are positioned to make a major difference. Your help is essential to make it real. We ask you to make a special contribution, beyond what you have been giving to support our usual work.

I want to be clear that this is not just for everyday expenses. You are being offered the opportunity to do the ultimate act of giving life: awaken the communities that could actually generate the power to save and heal our Mother Earth -- our common home, as Pope Francis pointed out. The home our children and grandchildren will live in joyfully –-- or suffer and die in.

Please click on the maroon Contribute banner in the left-hand margin of this page.

Every gift will help. We ask you to consider a range between $180 and $1800.

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Make a recurring donation and receive Freedom Journeys as our token of appreciation. Click here for more info about the book. Freedom Journeys is a deep meditation on the timeless—and timely—relevance of the Exodus narrative. In the grand tradition of mystical exegesis, Waskow and Berman reflect upon Exodus not only as an event that happened “then” and “there”, but a paradigm of movement that is happening here and in the now, for all of us, Jew and Muslim, Black and White, male and female. —Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies, University of North Carolina.